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How to Make a Killing

2026-10-262026-05-17 by Steve

Not to be confused with a 2024 French black comedy with the title How to Make a Killing (in English at least), this one is from 2026 and stars Glen Powell. A remake of 1949’s Kind Hearts and Coronets, it is, you know, OK, and demonstrates (yet again) how good those Ealing chaps were at cranking out superficially slight comedies with a stiletto subtext. Director/adapter John Patton Ford updates things to the 21st century, where little Becket Redfellow (Powell as an adult, Grady Wilson as a kid) is born into a wealthy family but is kicked out of it when his mother marries beneath her. Having grown up broke, and having promised his … Read more

Snowpiercer

2022-11-102014-11-30 by Steve

That sound? The plane taking off from LAX taking another great Asian director back home, sobbing with disappointment. It happened to John Woo, who did at least manage to crank out Face/Off, but his sad run of Hollywood films include Windtalkers, Mission: Impossible II and Hard Target. To the Pang brothers too, whose The Eye was one of the attention-grabbers of 2002. They came to Hollywood, made The Messengers for Sam Raimi, then put their tail between their legs and went home. So what about the latest Asian import, the great South Korean director Bong Joon Ho, whose uniquely flavoured movies include Memories of Murder, a killer-thriller-whodunit whose cops get their man more … Read more

Enemy at the Gates

2023-10-302013-08-24 by Steve

Here’s a mixed bag of European war movie that is trying to be Saving Private Ryan in its impressive opening scenes, but looks as if it realises it doesn’t have the budget and so scales back the action to concentrate on two lone snipers. One German, one Russian. It’s set during the battle of Stalingrad, in which more than two million people died – yes, two million – and so the decision makes some logistical sense, even if it shortchanges the Russians and their epic level of sacrifice. The fact that it does that is what got the goat of a lot of historians masquerading as film critics, who suggested that the film … Read more

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